Team | Coffee Shop Gurus
Back L-R: Hasan Talal, Momna Chaudhry, Buraira Gerwal, Jaiser Abbass, Muhammad Asid
Front: Rohan David

Coffee Shop Gurus (A project of Green & White Pakistan) is a Social Enterprise of Social Media Experts. It is Pakistan’s First Real Entrepreneurial Incubator platform that promotes entrepreneurs working in any domain. Yes! It does not matter that whether you are starting a Home Bakery or making some Mobile App, Coffee Shop Gurus incubates them all from the grass root level. Here young entrepreneurs join hands with experts and bring to reality their entrepreneurial ideas. Promoting women entrepreneurship in Pakistan is a high priority.

During the incubation process the entrepreneurial ideas are put through strict process that polishes the idea. Due to a number of gurus attached to single idea, the attendees of the program get various view point about the same thing which helps in building a true market analysis. Coffee Shop Gurus aims to establish Pakistan’s first true incubation center that nurtures number of businesses all together in one place. We strongly believe that future of Pakistan is in the hands of youth and promoting youth for entrepreneurship at the time of economic depression is the best contribution to boost the development of Pakistan.
Making to the training process takes a lot of scrutinization of the entrepreneurs. After the nomination of the entrepreneurial projects and the interview process, the projects that make out alive are ready to be the part of Coffee Shop Gurus training process. To make the entrepreneurial projects successful, they go under rigorous training for 5 weeks. The meetings are held every Saturday, during the training session, which are mandatory for the entrepreneurs to attend. The week breakdown is: Week 1: Idea Tailoring & Branding, Week 2: Business Planning, Week 3: Marketing on Social Media and Internet, Week 4: Sales & Networking & Week 5: Reviews.
The syllabi and training process of Coffee Shop Gurus has develop after almost 2 years of research work on environment of incubation on the Pakistani Culture. The process has been exactly tailored to the requirements of this region. With a great deal flexibility with in the program, it can also be replicated around the world with almost no changes. The project holds the honor of conducting various country wide researches on social media and its behavior in Pakistan.
Coffee Shop Gurus is also building a knowledge base on entrepreneurial content by transforming the foreign content on entrepreneurship according to local requirement on research basis. Coffee Shop Gurus’ Blog can be visited at and do not forget to look for our Social Media case studies. Don’t forget to like Coffee Shop Gurus on Facebook.

Coffee Shop Gurus @ TEDxSummit, Doha, Qatar

The Lighter Side of Coffee Shop Gurus

While we are different personalities, there is one vision that brings both Nabeel Akmal Qadeer and myself on a common platform i.e. “Educating, Motivating and Inspiring Pakistani Youth”. Both of us want students to follow their passion and field of choice after graduation.

In order to achieve these objectives, we launched a startup, went to educational institutes in various cities, and tried whatever we could do at our end to help the ambitious lot. Last year, both of us left Pakistan to pursue higher studies in management that we have successfully completed recently.

So Nabeel recently called me up and shared this initiative “My Biz Pakistan”. My immediate response was “What’s so different in that?” Nabeel said “It has what we were lacking before.” Then he continued to elaborate why it’s different and I somewhat agreed to the root cause why we failed in the earlier iterations of our plans. In short, it was the lack of resources at hand. Though I am not part of this team, the plan discussed by Nabeel totally resonates with how we should support Pakistani Startups. It’s time to mature our angel investment market.

Many of you might know about Amer Qureshi. Amer is a highly experienced Australian Chartered Accountant, Business Advisor and Author. Born in Pakistan, but having spent most of his professional life in Australia, Amer has developed a passion for helping business owners, entrepreneurs and professional improve their lives. This passion has led him to write four books, develop numerous seminars and TV Shows with the aim of motivating and inspiring people. An excellent speaker and presenter Amer has contributed to the development of a large number of professionals and business owners in Australia, Pakistan, Dubai and Qatar.

My Biz initiative has been developed with Amer’s vision to help the young Pakistanis become entrepreneurs and take control of their lives. My Biz Pakistan would provide training, tools, networks and access to Angel funding for starting small businesses. The angels would also act as mentors to these young entrepreneurs. It is not a charity, a micro finance institution, an NGO, a government authority or anything of the sort. This is a setup where few Pakistani Business Leaders are trying to make a difference.

The angel investors will fund innovative business ideas that are considered to have great potential for success. The funding arrangements are negotiated between the investors and the entrepreneurs, however, the organization would provide the framework, ideas and advice and help you through the process. Typically for small startups, the funding will be limited to between PKR 50,000 and 200,000 and will be made in stages on achieving agreed milestones.

Both Investors and Entrepreneurs can work with My Biz Pakistan. Terms for both the parties are mentioned at http://www.mybizpakistan.com. For students, the My Biz Ambassadors in your city and your university are your first point of contact, and will be able to provide all the necessary information and advice that you need. In the event of any additional assistance, you may also contact one of My Biz consultants. If you want to be the ambassador at an educational institute, you can also apply for that by following the application process at http://www.mybizpakistan.com/join-us.html

Moreover, the inside scoop is that some former CEOs of multinationals would soon be joining the My Biz Board, and that the organization has already engaged investors from Australia and Dubai. If you have a good proposal, they can invest right away. So what are you waiting for?  Now you don’t have an excuse that you are short of cash to take the jump.

Every day we come across website addresses trailing with “.com.pk”, “.net.pk”, “.org.pk”, “.edu.pk”, “.gov.pk” or simply “.pk”. To land on this site, you also typed “entrepreneurs.pk”. However, majority people in my network don’t have an idea who operates this “PK” thing for us. It is sad to mention that even many IT Professionals and Computer Science students in Pakistan don’t know about PKNIC (Pakistan Network Information Center (Pvt) Ltd.), the registry responsible for the .pk country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for Pakistan since most of the people acquire domain name via resellers with a hosting plan. Those who know about PKNIC are unaware of the fact that it is owned and run by Mr. Ashar Nisar, A Pakistani – American who graduated from UET Lahore in the 80s.

Ashar, the reclusive owner of PKNIC (the entity which registers all .pk domains) is termed as an unsung hero along with Imran Anwar, the pioneer and founder of internet and email in Pakistan. Those who have been associated with IT Industry since its inception term Ashar, Imran and Alvi brothers as the fathers of Pakistani IT Industry.

The .PK domain was envisaged as being a private sector provider of services to promote Internet in Pakistan. Formed in 1990,  Ashar Nisar and Imran Anwar both co-founded it as both of them were UET students and neighbors. Every effort was made to keep the government and the telephone monopoly out of it. This remains true to this day. However, some differences arose between the duo and ultimately Imran moved out leaving the complete management control to Ashar.  Mr. Ashar, the technical genius later went onto form PKNIC to manage the ccTLD.

The ccTLD is normally owned by government’s regulatory authority or the ministry of IT but the case of Pakistan is totally different. PKNIC operates from USA although important government, educational, and private organizations including PTA are currently using the DotPK domain server. Recently, The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) persuaded this US-based Pakistani company PKNIC to set up an office in Lahore and deploy a mirrored root server in Pakistan which is fully operational now.

Apart from the PKNIC story, some of you may already know that the very first PC computer virus was developed in our very own Lahore, back in 1986. The famous Brain Code used to change the volume label on a floppy disk since there were no hard disks at that time. This invention is generally attributed to the Alvi brothers, Basit and Amjad but the role of their friend Ashar Nisar is often overlooked. I have been told by various sources that Ashar was the original inventor and that this virus was originally displayed during the National Science Exhibition at UET. Alvi Brothers just modified and released it with their name.

I daily come across individuals who talk negatively about this champ and debate that PKNIC’s registration numbers and some management practices are not up to the mark. But considering how he started from nowhere, did right things at the right time, faced pressures from government & non-governmental organizations, and stands out as a role model for our technology students,  Mr. Ashar Nisar is our entrepreneur of the month.

Pakistan at the moment needs real walk persons instead of real talk ones. Don’t get carried away when gurus advise you that you don’t have a business model or a proper plan, and that there are giants against whom you can’t survive. Just believe in yourself and your idea or product. If its really good, you can eventually make 100 business models out of it. Give it your 110% and Insha’Allah you’ll succeed. If you fail, try again. One day you will.

Don’t wait. Somebody else might have the same idea. Go and grab the opportunity NOW. Even if you’ll let it go due to failure someday, at least you won’t regret that you never tried.

TEDxLahore Team will upload all the talks on 31st August 2010. Those who couldn’t attend the event should definitely take out some time to listen the “Ideas Worth Sharing.”

The first question that came to our mind was “What is the immediate need of the victims that we have to address?”  The obvious answer was food and water. There is water everywhere but none safe to drink. Outbreaks of cholera are common in large floods and arranging safe drinking water to many millions of people is of extreme importance. Hence we decided to look out for water solutions as it is not possible to deliver mineral water everywhere.

Last year I saw the following  talk amongst the TEDGlobal 2009 videos where Engineer Michael Pritchard introduced his revolutionary product “Life Saver Bottle”.

I was still wondering that how can we use the same idea here that we received an email from Mr. Azhar Mateen who told us about a similar system that they have developed in Pakistan. Instead of bottle, it is more of a manual filtration plant. The plant is capable to treat the flood water directly and its capacity is more than 1000 liters per hour. Since electricity is not available in the affected areas, the system is capable to run without electricity. He further told us that they are donating 10 plants  for free and can provide us similar system on no profit no loss basis for only PKR 250,000 whereas such a system would cost much more if we’ll try to import it. The company behind the project is Tauseef Water owned by Mr.Tauseef Anjum of Tauseef Enterprises Ltd.

The following video is the live demo of the working system.

Moreover, a friend emailed me the following poster which showed steps of making a good sand water filter. Additional details about this can be downloaded from here.

I somewhat felt really happy that people are coming up with amazing ideas to help out their fellow countrymen. Burt Rutan once said that “Innovation occurs in periods of adversity”. I would request all readers to step up and come out with such innovative solutions & initiatives that can be used to help our brothers and sisters. Since we have to rebuild these areas, smart relief efforts and superior infrastructural & residential planning is the need of the hour.

In the waters of the devastation hitting Pakistan lies a chance to reinvent our condition by washing away the regrets of the last 63 years and laying the foundations of a new temple. But only if we have the courage and vision to think on these lines.

P@SHA

Imran Sayeed, a serial entrepreneur, a consultant, an engineer, a mentor, a rainmaker, and a great supporter of many initiatives in Pakistan including the OPEN-MITEF initiative would be in Lahore on July 29.

Imran is the Senior Vice President, Global Architecture, Application Development and Management Practice and leads all commercial sector industry practices for Keane, a global BPO and IT Services company with ~14,000 professionals worldwide. Industry practices include Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Retail, Hospitality & Travel and Energy, and together comprise most of the key business lines and customers for Keane.

Imran Sayeed came to Keane through its acquisition of netNumina, a boutique technology strategy and consulting form that he founded and grew from a 15 person startup to one of Computerworld’s Top 100 emerging companies. netNumina won more than 30 of the leading financial services & pharmaceutical institutions in the world as clients, raised more than $25MM from venture capitalists and strategic investors and received more than 20 industry awards for its work.

Imran has over fifteen years of experience in software and services. Previously, as a founder of Open Environment, Sayeed helped pioneer multi-tier client server technology, and grew the company from a 10-person startup to an IPO and leadership in the middleware market.

He has written and spoken extensively in leading industry conferences and trade journals over the last 13 years on entrepreneurship, e-business, financial services, insurance and technology. Sayeed serves on the Advisory Board of several software and private equity companies.

Imran Sayeed also holds a patent on technology for providing secure financials transactions over the Internet that he jointly developed with Citigroup. He is currently a visiting faculty member at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he teaches in the MBA program on technology business strategy.

He attended Brown University where he majored in Engineering, and Harvard University, where he did post-graduate work in business, marketing and product development.

The interactive talk is being held at the NIB Auditorium at LUMS from 5:30 – 7:30 pm on July 29, 2010. It is a FREE event but you must register so that the management can do arrangements accordingly.

Click here to Register.

Click Here to RSVP on the Facebook Event Page.

It was late 2005 when I started promoting entrepreneurship, social media and startups amongst the techies in Lahore. I came up with a name called “Technology Entrepreneurs Den (TED)” for our meetups but little did I know that there was already a global phenomenon known as TED. I got to know about it when few people asked me if I am coming up with a local TED event. I had to drop down the name but at least it introduced me to the wonderful TED Platform and since then I have listened around 80-90 phenomenal TED Talks.

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TEDx program and the annual TED Prize.

The TED Conference, held annually in Long Beach, is still the heart of TED. More than a thousand people now attend — indeed, the event sells out a year in advance — and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.

Last year in July, when Asim Fayaz told me that a license has been acquired, I was overjoyed that finally we would have a platform to share ideas and reach out to masses. Asim did invite me to earlier events at LUMS and Kinnaird which were held on July 25 2009 and February 23 2010 respectively but few professional commitments didn’t let me join both the events. On May 22, 2010, I got an email from Asim for the third event. I decided the very day that this time over I’ll definitely register for TEDxLahore and make it to the event.

The best thing was that Asim had a humungous plan for this one unlike previous events. Last month, I got to know that 3 other friends would be amongst the top management as well. Tajdar O. Chaudry is there for PR, Conventional Media Relations and spamming our twitter feeds. If you see good publicity on TV and Radio Channels this time around, he’s the man behind all this.  Bilal Rashid performs the wonderful duty of adding “X” to the event and is standing besides the TEDxLahore Team with his brilliant photography and talent management skills.

Khurram Siddiqi, who’s a relatively new to my friends list, did a marvelous job in selecting the speakers for the event. He finally managed to convince few females to speak at the event. Moreover, I was introduced to Nuzhat Saadia Siddiqui by them whom I have never met earlier but I guess I would definitely try to meet her on the event day if she’s free from the volunteer tasks to know more about the Mobile and Door Jamming programs that Khurram has worked on in order to avoid any disturbance during the event.  The ever humble Jazib Zahir, the COO of TinTash has never failed to impress me. If it’s an entrepreneurial effort of any sort, he’s there for you without any attitude.

The TEDxLahore received around 900 applications till 22nd July against 270 seats and the successful applicants have been informed. I would like to congratulate Asim for assembling a dream team and then putting up a marvelous effort into the event with all the volunteers. This team of professional and student volunteers surely deserve kudos. Those who want to know more about the event should watch and listen the following links and I would appreciate if no one from accepted audience drops out. The event would include some good short films and musical performances apart from the inspirational & motivational talks. If you are not coming, please inform the TEDxLahore Team. There are definitely hundreds of people waiting for this opportunity to come to them.

Those in Islamabad can join the Islamabad Viewing Party at  Civil Junction (Near Jinnah Supper Market, F-7/3) whereas Karachiites can watch the live feed at The Second Floor (T2F) in DHA, Karachi. Live stream of the event will be hosted at the Pakistani Embassy in the Netherlands as well. The event would be held on July 31, 2010 from 2:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. (PST) at Ali Institute of Education, Lahore.

A report on TEDxLahore by Rabia Mahmood of Express 24/7

TEDxLahore Team on Express 24/7’s “The Morning Show” with Waqas Rafique

Coffee Republic with Aysha Raja – TEDxLahore Team’s interview on City FM 89

Winners - mBillionth Awards 2010

It was Jehan and Rabia Garib’s twitter feed that led me to register my product for the mBillionth Award 2010. When I registered, I knew that we’ll be rejected in even short listing as we couldn’t find an appropriate category to nominate our product. Moreover our application was unlaunched and running in private alpha amongst our own company employees. We thought that by the time jury will judge our entry, we will launch the public alpha. But if you are in a telecom business where operators have an upper hand, launching your service independently becomes a herculean task. I don’t know which place did we end up in Grand Jury held in Colombo last month but I am happy that we were at least shortlisted for jury.

The m-Billionth Award South Asia 2010 was the first of its kind in the region recognizing and felicitating mobile innovations, applications and content services delivery. It was arranged to honour excellence in mobile communications across South Asia spread over 10 core categories. The m-Billionth Award is designed as an annual South Asia’s leading mobile content’s award platform towards larger regional Mobile Congress in media and policy advocacy. The platform was created with the help of DIT and Digital Empowerment Foundation who have come together to create a regional platform and had support of partners like mint newspaper, VAS companies like IMImobile, OnMobile, One97 and the umbrella organization such as IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India). Pakistan Software House Association (P@SHA) was the Country Partner, Bytesforall , the Strategic Partner and CIO Pakistan, the Media Partner from our side.

21st Century World could be a cellular age going by the phenomenal increase in cell phones worldwide. The cellular age is fast accelerating with cell phones magnifying our larger identity in both individual and collective domains and in various social, cultural, economic contexts. This tremendous growth of mobile penetrations is a scene to be witnessed worldwide especially in developing countries with larger population concentration. Thus, the power of cellular technology is evident. And South Asia is and cannot be left behind. Therefore, the objective of the awards was to

• Recognise mobile innovations and creativity.
• Provide a platform for the innovations into benchmarking in the mobile industry.
• Provide a wider forum for strategic networking, alliances and partnership building.
• Provide a South Asia Congress to exchange ideas, practices and policy strengths & mobile advocacy.
• Facilitate in building a South Asia network towards campaign and advocacy in mobile for mass empowerment and inclusive growth.

The response to the mBillionth Award nomination process was phenomenal: more than 250 entries were received and after screening 165 nominations were successfully accepted: India – 121, Sri Lanka – 28, Bangladesh – 07, Pakistan – 05, Nepal – 03, and Maldives – 1. The 14 member Jury came up with 24 winners & 12 special mentions from 5 South Asian Countries.

Osama Manzar, the man behind the awards said “No business vertical or community will remain untouched by this pervasive mobile device: entrepreneurs from all sectors, community leaders from all regions and government officials from all departments are curious to know how they can leverage the mobility platform to cause transformational impact on areas of their impact and influence.”

There was an impressive line-up of eminent dignitaries, best practitioners, innovators and policy makers for various plenary sessions scheduled at the full day mBillionth Congress, Exposition and Award Gala held at Hotel InterContinental Eros in New Delhi yesterday to promote cross-border exchange of ideas, policy strengths and mobile advocacy.

EntrepreneursPK Team is extremely delighted to inform you that though there were only 5 nominations from Pakistan amongst 250 total entries, yet we won 2 awards at the mBillionth Awards 2010. The Citizen Journalism Startup, SeenReport won in the m-News & Journalism category whereas Jaroka Tele-Healthcare won in the m-Health category. We take this opportunity to congratulate SeenReport and Jaroka Teams, and are hopeful that next year we would have many more winners to make us proud. Also our gratitude goes to the Digital Empowerment Foundation for taking the lead in creating this recognition and networking platform for mobile content developers.

The list of winners of mBillionth Awards 2010 is as follows.

m-GOVERNANCE

1. Many to One SMS, INDIA www.katnidistrict.org

2. GPS/GSM Based Train Tracking System, SRI LANKA

3. Paperless Admission System of Shahjalal University of Science & Technology (SUST), BANGLADESH http://sust.edu/admission

4. M-Distribution, INDIA www.megovernance.com

m-INCLUSION

1. Dialog Tradenet, SRI LANKA http://www.tradenet.dialog.lk

2. Dakia, INDIA http://one97world.com/

3. Voice of Youth, NEPAL http://www.ccfocusone.com

4. Panini Keypad, INDIA www.paninikeypad.com

5. Nepal Wireless, NEPAL http://www.nepalwireless.net

m-NEWS & JOURNALISM

1. Reuters Market Light, INDIA http://thomsonreuters.com/

2. Gaon Ki Awaaz, INDIA http://gaonkiawaaz.wordpress.com/

3. See ’n’ Report, PAKISTAN http://seenreport.com/

4. CGNet Swara, INDIA http://audiowiki.no-ip.org/admin/playback.php

m-EDUCATION & LEARNING

1. English Seekho, INDIA http://englishseekho.in

2. Drona, INDIA www.deltecs.com

3. Ability, INDIA www.willager.com/ability

m-ENTERTAINMENT

1. 3G Play, SRI LANKA http://wavenet.lk/

2. M-Search, INDIA http://onmobile.com/

3. Colombo Ride 2.0, SRI LANKA http://games.lk

4. Mobile Antakshari, INDIA http://www.slideshare.net/rajam/mobile-antakshari

m-TRAVEL & TOURISM

1. SMS 139 Railway Enquiry, INDIA www.spicedigital.in

2. AWATAR Mobile Booking, INDIA http://www.kstrc.in

3. Suruk, INDIA http://www.suruk.com

4. MobileWishPocket Travel Assistant, INDIA http://mobilewish.com/pta

m-BUSINESS & COMMERCE

1. EKO, INDIA www.eko.co.in

2. WorldGSM™ INDIA www.vnl.in

3. Mobiquity mMoney, INDIA http://comviva.com/

4. Business Express, BANGLADESH http://batworld.com/

5. Voice ERP, INDIA http://uniphore.com/

m-HEALTH

1. Eliminating queues in OPDs in hospitals – An m-Health initiative by JPN ATC, INDIA

2. Jaroka Tele-Healthcare, PAKISTAN www.jaroka.seecs.edu.pk

3. Students Health Information Tracking System (SWHITS) for Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (APSWREIS), INDIA http://swhits.cgg.gov.in

4. Aarogyam, INDIA http://jpnagar.nic.in/aarogyam/default.htm

m-ENVIRONMENT

1. m-Governance for Forest & Wildlife Management, INDIA

m-CULTURE & HERITAGE

No Winners

Special Awards:

Most Innovative Nomination

Ability, INDIA

Chairman’s Award for Emerging Mobile Initiative

Dhiraagu – Mobile Zakat, MALDIVES